Super-predatory humans
Predators have roamed the planet for 500 million years. The earliest is thought to be some type of simple marine organism, a flatworm maybe or type of crustacean, perhaps a giant shrimp that feasted on ancient trilobites. Much later came the famous predatory dinosaurs such as T. rex, and later still large toothed mammals such as sabre toothed cats or modern wolves.
But one or two hundred thousand years ago, the worlds most powerful predator arrived.
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We lacked big teeth or sharp claws, huge tentacles or venomous bites. But we had intelligence, and the guile to produce tools and artificial weapons. And as we became ever better hunters we started harvesting animals on a great scale.
We wiped out the passenger pigeon, the dodo, the great herds of North American bison. Last century we decimated great whale populations. Today the worlds fishing fleets routinely take more fish than scientists say is sustainable, leading to crashes in cod numbers for example, while people kill more large mammals in North America than all other causes put together.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wondermonkey/2012/02/super-predatory-humans.shtml
xchrom
(108,903 posts)leveymg
(36,418 posts)DCKit
(18,541 posts)The trophy hunters got busted (out of season weapons, illegal weapons) this winter, kinda' ruining the rest of their season, so Karma does work.
bulloney
(4,113 posts)They look like they're flourishing to me.
sad sally
(2,627 posts)Rivaling the price of gold on the black market, rhino horn is at the center of a bloody poaching battle.
By Peter Gwin - National Geographic (this once majestic beast had to be humanely euthanized)
read the story at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/rhino-wars/gwin-text